Bangai-O Spirits Review
Posted By: Kevin on Sep 02 2008

Developer Treasure is well known for their intense action experiences. They have proved time and time again that a simple mechanic can be combined with a lot of flair to produce a resounding game.

Those that have played Treasure’s shooter backlog, all the way from the Genesis’ Gunstar Heroes to the Playstation 2’s Gradius V, know that Treasure produces high tension affairs. The core design of these games is to present an obstacle, whether it is a boss or a series of encounters that seem to push the player to the limits of their aptitude. Once the challenge is overcome, the player will quickly see that what they felt was a self-contained battle was simply a building block of the next challenge.

Now, many if not all action games do this. It is a typical setup to get a power, use it to kill a boss as a last ditch effort, then evolve that power into normal attacks later on. The same goes with enemies; the boss of stage 2 becomes a normal enemy in stage 5. What puts Treasure on top of the pack is that they simply do it better than anyone else. Nearly every boss fight feels like a clenched ending battle. A perfect example of this is an area in Astro Boy where the player battles a single large robot. While not incredibly hard, the battle is tense and feels very much like it could be a boss of the stage. Immediately after destroying the enemy, Astro Boy moves a few steps to only have 4 of the same robot fall from the ceiling and attack immediately. Treasure understands timing. They are the action developer equivalent of a comedian with perfect comedic timing.

Bangai-O Spirits is another great notch in the developer’s belt. Those that played Alien Soldier for the Genesis will remember that game as a series of boss fights. Spirits is the opposite setup; the game is a series of simple stages. Completely dropping any sort of convention concerning plot or story past the opening tutorial stages, Bangai-O Spirits is simply a pool of 150+ stages for the player to choose from. Some stages are very short puzzle affairs, others present long drawn out action sequences. Each stage can be edited and sent to friends via the game’s resounding Sound Load.

Bangai-O plays like a sort of mishmash of earlier Treasure games. Take the flying sections of Astro Boy and strip out the forward scrolling motion. Pan the camera out giving you a more bird’s eye view of your robot (named Bangai-O of course). Add the weapon switching mechanics of either Gunstar Heroes or Radiant Silvergun. Combine all of these with bite size stages that are perfect for pick-up play.

Bangai-O is controlled by the D-pad which allows him to dash horizontally and fly up and down briskly. The various face and shoulder buttons on the DS are mapped to 4 different weapons and a dash. The assortment seems small at first, basically just 2 melee weapons, a shield, several missile types (the main armament) and a few powers. But like most Treasure games it is the mix of these sparing weapons that truly brings on addiction. Also, because of the brevity of the stages it is not a chore to cycle through 2 or 3 weapon settings before finding the one that lends itself best to the looming challenge.

Graphically, it is a pleasure to see the familiar sights of Treasure; namely explosions, explosions, explosions. It really isn’t a stretch to call Bangai-O Spirits an all-out celebration of the Treasure motto which is barely controlled chaos. Their 3rd game on the Nintendo DS, Bangai-O Spirits does recycle a little from Bleach 1 and 2. Some of the explosion animations are reused, but that is about it. Pixelization abounds in this title but it is present in that sexy way that only Treasure knows. Missile sprites are stretched and morphed, based on the proximity of the enemies’ firepower. Slowdown is the name of the game and purposefully encouraged. The bigger the revenge attack, the chuggier the game’s engine becomes, but only for a few moments. Soon the missiles will find their targets and the game kicks back into lightning fast speed. It is this rubber band effect that is essential to victory in Bangai-O Spirits. Half of the fun of any Treasure game is manipulating the game’s engine; slowing it and speeding it up as you need to.

It is true that mastering any of Bangai-O’s game play mechanics is not rewarded so much as it is required. Bangai-O, without a doubt, is a HARD game. The hundred plus stages range the gambit, but more often than not the player will find himself attempting the same stage several times. The devilish laughter following the Game Over screen becomes an old trusted friend after the 50th time of hearing it. The soothing tonic that makes the game’s difficulty go down smoother is the fact that no stage is more than a few minutes long. Compared to the difficulty of normal shooters, where stages can stretch to the 15 minute mark, Spirits’ stages are so short that retrying them seems almost natural.

Outside of the bizarre game play systems and unique graphics, Treasure has designed a truly one of a kind, only able on DS experience. Eschewing the clunkiness of Nintendo’s Friend Codes, the developers have instead turned to the hardware to fulfill their vision of community. Stages and replays are swapped via the DS’s built in microphone. Data is played back when transferring a stage and can even be recorded to a PC where it is free to spread around as public media is apt to do. Already numerous websites and YouTube channels have sprung up to host the nefarious creations of gamers which even rise above some of Treasure’s best. This is one case where the lack of a WiFi logo on the box does not mean the single player campaign is the final product.

Bangai-O is hopefully just another step in Treasure’s aggressive development on the Nintendo DS. Even if it were their last it is one hell of a send off. It is a game about robots, fruit, missiles and nothing else. And that is all it ever needs.